The intrinsic value of a diary from the 1880s is an irrelevancy relative to the value of one with a ripper signature and even an electrician would know that.

I cannot see how Michaels being able to show that he could get one for 25 quid would be able to convince an electrician that his one with a ripper signature wasnt worth whatever.

The value of a physical diary is surely irrelevant in establishing a price for one with a ripper signature.

It doesnt make sense to me.

Its the equivalent of saying that an signed Elvis guitar cannot be worth 1000 pounds because I can get an unsigned one for 25 pounds.

P

__________________"Chance hasn't yet peached on Jack the Ripper.If she ever does, it will probably be cause for grotesque disappointment among the Ripperologists, who get as much joy from attacking one another's lunacies, as from any problems originally posed by the Whitechapel murderer" R. Gowers, The Independant, Saturday, 31 December 1994

I think they are - finally. This isn't the end, nor even the beginning of the end. But we may be reaching the end of the beginning.

I truly believe one has to have mental issues at this point to cling to the idea that Barrett himself created the Diary. That is just not a tenable proposition anymore, if it ever was.

Believing that a clever forger of the Watch and Diary willingly chose to use Barrett as the instrument to reveal his creation to the world just strains the credulity as well. The "Master Forger" hands this over to Barrett and then Barrett ADVERTISES for a diary?? It staggers the imagination.

I had the pleasure of meeting Keith Skinner at the Liverpool conference; we've never spoken before. Katja, James and I spent the better part of 5 hours comparing notes.

One thing we discussed was Barrett's knowledge of the Maybricks as well as Jack the Ripper. Keith said that when he first "interviewed" Mike, Barrett showed little familiarity with either the Maybrick case nor Jack the Ripper. It's an important point because "first contact " tells you a fair amount; later in the Diary saga Mike clearly strove to get up to speed on both cases. Witness the back dated "research notes".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Caroline Brown

They would both have good reason to keep their mouths shut about its Battlecrease hiding place, no matter how much money and publicity would be involved, but one can hardly blame the electrician if he resented what Mike was likely to earn in the long run from the book royalties. Did he threaten to spill the beans unless Mike shared the loot with him? It might have been an empty threat if he feared being done for theft, but could Mike have taken the risk? When the royalties started coming in, did Mike use some or all of those large cash withdrawals to keep the electrician sweet? If so, did he confess, very shortly after the last withdrawal, to writing the diary himself, in order to get the electrician off his back for good, even if it meant less diary money in the future?

Two comments. Personally I don't think you can separate Mike's behavior from the state of his marriage, and Feldman's evolving relationship with Anne. It explains a lot of otherwise insane, self destructive behavior. Mix in alcohol for further fun and frolics.

I strongly suspect that the electricians didn't surrender the Diary for just 20 or 25 pounds. Yes, they didn't hear what they wanted to hear from Liverpool University and undoubtedly that put them in a poorer bargaining position. But they clearly recognized that the Diary was potentially valuable, unlike the Watch, hence the quick trip to the uni. (I doubt they saw the Watch scratches. I had a hard time seeing them at Liverpool and knew what to look for!!)

The scenario that goes a long way to making sense of things that seem nonsensical or bizarre would be a profit sharing arrangement similar to what Albert did with the Watch: sell shares in the artifact. I don't doubt that the electricians had brought things to Barrett in the past, like copper wiring. Little did they anticipate that they were later going to be entering the Feldman Reality Distortion Field .....or that Scotland Yard was going to involve themselves as well. That alone would buy 25 years of semi-silence. That must have scared the living merde out of them. Selling something for 25 pounds is one thing; the latter payments would have elevated it to a felony.

The intrinsic value of a diary from the 1880s is an irrelevancy relative to the value of one with a ripper signature and even an electrician would know that.

Agreed, but what's an electrician going to do about that, if he has just stolen the latter?

Quote:

I cannot see how Michaels being able to show that he could get one for 25 quid would be able to convince an electrician that his one with a ripper signature wasnt worth whatever.

Again, agreed. But we are talking initially about Mike's thinking here. He wants that diary so he can claim to be the man who solved the mystery of JtR's identity. That much is obvious from subsequent events. But he is also a man of very limited means. He can't suddenly come up with a small fortune in cash to beat off any opposition. From his point of view his only hope of doing that may have been to persuade said electrician that a Victorian diary could be bought legitimately for £25, but if his one wasn't legit, it didn't matter whose signature was in it, or when it was dated, because nobody would shell out thousands for something a lowly electrician had found in 1992, but refused to say when or where. Mike was the one who would take on that little task, by saying his dead mate gave it to him the previous year. And thousands of pounds were eventually involved, when the publishing deal was struck. It was during that process, in the summer of 1992, that the electrician confided in a colleague that he had found something under the floorboards that could be important. Odd thing to say if nobody at that time had any knowledge of a diary connected with Battlecrease, or of Mike's call to Doreen about it, or of subsequent events. But the incident and its timing both fit all too perfectly with Mike keeping him informed of developments.

So I certainly take on board Sir Robert's point, and imagine Mike's bargaining tools could well have extended to a promise to share any decent spoils if and when Mike could make them materialise, with a little inside knowledge of the publishing world. Clearly the electrician would need to part with the diary and stay in the background for this to work, while Mike remained the front man, but once Doreen expressed her interest and the ball got rolling, the electrician would be persuaded that he could achieve no better result by going it alone, with trips to Universities and so on.

So the electrician accepts £25 as a down payment [equalling what the Barretts are shelling out to establish what the basic book is worth, minus a legitimate provenance and a rich buyer] and leaves Mike at the business end. When the serious money starts coming in, Mike honours the shady contract and shares the filthy lucre.

God knows how the electrician reacted when Mike said he wrote the diary himself, and then Anne said she'd had it in her family for years, but I doubt he'd have been too thrilled. On the one hand, it muddied the waters to such an extent that some people will never believe he pinched it from the house; on the other, he lost out on future royalties that Mike's 'confessions' put the tin hat on.

I know everyone here will understand, without me spelling it out and insulting your intelligence, that all the above is my ongoing speculation and as such is not intended to be taken as established fact.

I have to watch every effing syllable when I post elsewhere.

Love,

Caz
X

__________________I wish I were two puppies then I could play together - Storm Petersen

Might the above help to explain Mike's angry reaction and visit to Eddie when Paul Feldman suggested the latter was prepared to say he took the diary from Battlecrease, not in 1992, but back in 1989?

If there was a gentleman's agreement in place, to keep quiet about where Eddie got the diary so they could share the future proceeds, this would look to Mike like he was being double crossed. If Eddie was thinking of confessing to Feldman in return for lots of hard cash, Mike had to make him think again, and fast. Eddie had no guarantee that Mike would honour his part of the bargain in due course, so he could have seen this as a way of securing a lucrative deal before Mike could double cross him further down the line.

In the event Feldman wasn't prepared to throw money at what he came to believe was a scam, with the upshot that Eddie had nothing to gain from saying he took the diary. For Robert Smith's benefit, in June 1993, it became another book he'd found and thrown in a skip. That would have been for Mike's benefit too, to appease and reassure him that he wasn't going to do the dirty on him.

As for that date of 1989, Eddie was either lying about finding anything at all, or lying about the date. Not surprising if he was angling for a cash deal with Feldman in return for his confession. By putting his find back to 1989, when he wasn't working for Portus & Rhodes, he'd be protecting himself from a formal accusation of theft which could only have happened in 1992, when he could be placed in the house by timesheets or witnesses.

Sorry folks, but I have no idea where that angry face icon at the top came from - and I can't work out how to remove it.

Love,

Caz
X

__________________I wish I were two puppies then I could play together - Storm Petersen

Any takers for Feldman having 'discreetly' changed the date of the alleged Battlecrease provenance from 1992 to 1989, to better suit the purposes of his book?

Feldman was writing his book post 1995, and was already aware of the conclusion he needed/wanted to reach - specifically; Anne Graham recieved the Diary from her father etc....

I am now wondering whether Feldman deliberately altered the date of the supposed Battlecrease provenance, to better suit this conclusion? Surely, he could not have included the fact that Portus & Rhodes were working at Riversdale Road in March 1992, without some astute readers latching onto the coincidence? What better way to discredit the electricians (and bolster the credibility of Anne's account) than to knock the electricians' involvement back a few years?

Feldman also chose to omit any mention of Alan Davies, Brian Rawes & Tim Martin-Wright, despite having contacted them (using the alias "Mr. Black") as early as 1994. During a telephone conversation with Feldman, on Monday 6th June 1994, Martin-Wright informed Feldman that the Diary had been discovered at Battlecrease 'two-years ago'...i.e., 1992.

So, let's suppose that Feldman was writing with the intention of upholding & bolstering Anne's 'provenance'. Might this explain why Feldman chose not to identify Eddie (or A.Rigby) in his book? I can imagine there would have been several raised eyebrows, had 'the electrician who lived near The Saddle,' been named and associated with the work conducted at Riversdale Road in March 1992...

Since listening to Keith's interview with Colin Rhodes (2nd July 2004), it is clear that Feldman was made well aware of when Portus & Rhodes had been working at Battlecrease, and which electrians had been involved.

Further to this, Eddie was not employed at Portus & Rhodes until November 1991.

So is this a little slip of Feldman's pen? Or a surreptitious revision...?

Any takers for Feldman having 'discreetly' changed the date of the alleged Battlecrease provenance from 1992 to 1989, to better suit the purposes of his book?

Hi James,

Oddly enough, when seeing references elsewhere to Eddie's claim re 1989, and again as I was writing my latest post, it did occur to me that we might have been relying solely on Paul Feldman for this date, but it didn't occur to me that it was him being deliberately 'creative'. I thought that assuming it wasn't a typo, or innocent mistake, he was reporting what Eddie had told him, and that when he learned this could not be true, because Eddie wasn't yet working for Portus & Rhodes in 1989, it would only have served to convince him it was all a con.

Quote:

I am now wondering whether Feldman deliberately altered the date of the supposed Battlecrease provenance, to better suit this conclusion? Surely, he could not have included the fact that Portus & Rhodes were working at Riversdale Road in March 1992, without some astute readers latching onto the coincidence? What better way to discredit the electricians (and bolster the credibility of Anne's account) than to knock the electricians' involvement back a few years?

Hmmm, I suppose it's possible, but I'm sure Feldman really believed the truth was to be found with Anne and not Battlecrease. When he learned that the work done on the first floor only began on March 9, 1992, might his reaction have been to dismiss Eddie as a liar and forget the idea of the diary being taken from the house at all, because he considered it physically impossible for it to be stolen, taken to the university, then back to Anfield, then sold to Mike, who then had to read it, before finally calling Doreen, all in the course of one working day? It has taken us ages to work through the evidence from the various players and see that this didn't have to happen all at once and that Mike may have had to wait several days to gain possession of the diary and give Doreen the go-ahead for their meeting.

I do understand, however, that it would have suited Feldman better to be able to give up on the electricians and concentrate on Anne if his film deal depended on nobody else coming out of the woodwork later with a legitimate claim to ownership of 'the property'.

Love,

Caz
X

__________________I wish I were two puppies then I could play together - Storm Petersen